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Tower of Horrors
After Varis finished loading all the money and gems into his magickal nap sack, we all knew what we had to do. Being the curious sort, the chance to explore the wizard’s tower was too tempting to pass up. And what better way to explore said tower, than to find a secret passageway leading to the tower’s crypts? It was just like a fairytale, secret passageways, a dragon guarding a tower, though I doubted there would be a beautiful maiden under a magickal slumber, waiting for true love’s kiss. With our luck, what was waiting for us in the tower was something likely to kill us. I was just hoping for an empty tower with neat books to look through. After discovering an opening behind the dragon’s hoard, we entered the bottom crypts of the tower. The first hallway was covered in ice, floor to ceiling. Strange. It was considerably colder here than in the icy cave of the dragon. When we stepped into the hallway, the ice leapt from the walls and attacked us! I tried to stay in the center of the small hallway, but it didn’t seem to matter. The ice struck out at you in a swirling storm of sharp icicles. The boys did most of the work—thankfully blades did the trick—and the ice stopped attacking us long enough for us to search the urns in the room. After pocketing some pretty gems and some gold and narrowly missing a trap door that would have thrown us into a fast-flowing hot spring, we climbed the steps to the next landing. This room’s floor with flagstone, the shape of the room itself was roughly square, and there were three doors—one on each wall. The most notable feature of the room, however, was the skeleton lying on the ground before the door straight ahead of us. By the looks of him, he had been here for quite some time. All that were left were bones, covered in dust and cobwebs. Varis, of course, searched the body and found nothing of interest on it. He did notice cuts on the floor, however. Avoiding the door behind the dead man, we tried the door to our left. It wasn’t latched, but turning the handle caused the click and clack of metal gears turning to erupt from overhead. We looked up just in time to see two creatures, if they could be called that, fall from the ceiling in front of us. The creatures weren’t alive, but animated by some device. They were wooden at their core, and fitted with sharp blades upon blades. At the base of the device were wheels that set the thing to spinning. With the four of us and two of them, the 10-foot square room was now cramped quarters. I tried to help the boys by bolstering them to use extra attacks and offering healing when I could, but I mostly tried to stay clear of those blades! They got me once, sliced the sleeve of my shirt into thin threads of fabric, and nearly made ribbons of my skin, too. The boys, however, were fairing much worse than I was. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before they had disabled one and were working to get the other one under control. After that, we took a moment to rest and catch our breath. Looking above us, there were no more whirling, bladed death traps that could be unleashed, but we had to wonder what more the tower or horrors could throw at us. Books! That’s all I wanted to find, just books! The next door we tried was the one by the skeleton. Hopefully the only scary thing about this door was the dead guy hanging out in front of it. We listened at the door and didn’t hear anything on the other side, but this door was locked. Varis took out his lock-picking kit and got to work on the door while we hung around and tried to look busy. Well, I did at least. Gar started rummaging through our packs for food. Praxis sat with his arms folded across his chest, not-so-subtly admiring his own flexed muscles. I cupped my hands around my ear and still couldn’t hear anything, other than Gar shuffling through our stuff. Varis managed to disable the lock. He turned the handle and heard the subtle click of a trap. Just in time, he moved out of the way to dodge a poisoned dart that flew past everyone and skidded on the floor. We thought we were safe after the dart had missed us, but again we were wrong. A sun rod revealed what was waiting for us. Two undead things hugged the walls of a scarred room that looked like it had seen its fair share of battles. There were cuts of blades in the floor and walls, but it didn’t look like the whirling blade devices had caused this damage. Soot marred the floor, as well, and the ruins of a desecrated sarcophagus rested against the wall furthest from the door. The dead things attacked with a shriek, trying to grab hold of us and draw on our energy with it's touch. Like maybe our life-force would somehow bring them back to life. Well that wasn’t going to happen. We had experience with these undead things, and knew they didn’t like Holy energy. I managed to wound one with a Hold ray of light! Me! The boys totally did good, too, of course, but I actually hurt one this time! After we killed the wraiths, which took a long time because their attacks weakened us, Varis thoroughly searched the sarcophagus. Needless to say, he was very disappointed to find it completely treasure-free. We hopped over the sarcophagus and ducked into the passageway behind the door—this one was unlocked. We found ourselves in a stone passageway, the floor was uneven, but seemed worn down and smoothed by a lot of foot traffic. The passageway curved to the left and ended at a ‘T.’ To the left looked to be another room, still completely dark. To the right was a smaller door, and another passageway continued up ahead slightly to the right. We continued to follow the passageway and ended up back nearly where we started. I guess there was something to say about being thorough, but the next two rooms were empty. That was fine by me, but the boys weren’t too happy about it. Another empty sarcophagus in a battle-scarred room, and we made it back to the same passageway that ended in a ‘T.’ This time, we would choose a different direction. Now, we were in uncharted territory. We slowed our pace slightly and started listening ahead for any bad guys that might jump out at us. After passing another empty room, we rounded a corner that lead into a dark, oval shaped chamber. In the middle of the chamber was a long, wooden table with six stools around it. The room reeked of sulfur. In fact, we had started to smell the faint odor of sulfur a few rooms ago, but it was definitely stronger here. As soon as we set foot in the room, we hear a growling noise coming from the corner of the room. A shadowy hound, similar to what attacked us when we got too close to the Veil, stalked us from across the room. A moment later, he attacked Varis. Thankfully, this shadow hound wasn’t as formidable as the one from the Veil. We were already exhausted from battling an enemy in almost every room of the catacombs and feared we still had many left to go. Once the hound had dissipated and we had dealt with our wounds, we continued on. The corridor widened beyond this room and was now smooth, worked stone. The corridor bent to the right and led to a much larger room with towering ceilings. Again, the smell of sulfur was strong here. At the end of the room there was a statue on a stepped dais. The statue was of a man, sneering down at us. In his hand he held the carved symbol of Erythnul. I didn’t know much about Erythnul, but I knew he wasn’t one of the good Gods. And then their came the raspy wail of some undead thing. Of course. We turned around to find a mostly-decomposed man lumbering after us, arms held up with long, curling fingernails. He got his hands on Praxis and was trying to choke him! Praxis broke free from him and attacked with his axe. Varis got him with his blade and the thing fell to the ground. We breathed a sigh of relief. That went faster than we thought. We turned to leave the room, and the thing sprang back to life and lunged again, this time for Varis. I stumbled back in fear and couldn’t do much more than stare in horror at what was happening to my friends. They quickly got things back under control with Gar pinning the horrible zombie down and dealing the final blow. We followed the strong smell of sulfur to the back of the statue where we discovered a small stone door. With Praxis’s muscle, we broke through it and emerged in a much warmer corridor with a slight downward grade. As we traveled, the worked stone gave away to a rougher rock passageway. Soon, bubbling and gurgling noises could be heard as the air around us became humid. One last turn, and we saw the tar pits. Horned creatures with strange-colored skin seemed to be bathing in the tar, just as my mistress bathed in purified, heated mud. It was my job to gather the mud from the western banks of Na’Dor. Something about the waves crashing upon the cliffs was supposed to make the mud cleaner. One time I was simply too busy to go all the way to the shore for the mud and just borrowed some from our own garden. Adona didn’t seem to notice the difference! Either way, she smelled like a flower pot and I had to spend hours scrubbing the tub clean after she was done. Anyhow, I didn’t think these demons cared about their complexion, but they didn’t seem to like us disturbing their bath. Thankfully, they couldn’t be bothered to get out of their tar bath and struck us from a distance, just as we did to them. Well, all except for Praxis. He flipped and rolled over the bridge, narrowly missing a trap that would have plunged him into the steaming tar. He also dodged a few attempts of the demons trying to pull him into their pit. I sat back with my bow and tried to focus on one demon at a time, hoping they wouldn’t then focus on me in return. Varis moved up to the bridge, but before he could think about crossing, a demon threw a net made of tar over him and tried to pull him into the pit. Thinking it better to just stick to his crossbow from then on it, he retreated with Gar and I into the cramped hallway. After we had killed most of the demons—well I just assumed they were dead—the rest just sunk all the way into the pits, letting the tar engulf them. We cautiously, quickly, carefully made our way across the bridge and into the next hallway. This hallway was about ten feet wide and fifty feet long, angling upward to two iron doors. As exhausted as we were, we thought this looked like as good a place as any to stop and rest for a few minutes. If nothing else, just to catch our breath. ~Zaly For next week's session summary, click here.